Blasphemy and Bubble Zones

I read recently that Pope John Paul II had a vision of Europe being taken over by Islam, the continent’s once-vibrant Christianity gone silent and dark, entombed and cobwebbed. With whatever grain of salt one takes such stories (such as another one I heard years ago, that ‘Quebec would save North America’, alas) the prophecy is becoming more true with each passing day. One need not look far for statistics, not least on birth-rates, which have dropped to precipitous, suicidal lows all across Europe. The exception is for the minority followers of Muhammad, who will not remain a minority for all that much longer, the way things are going. There will be no Germans in Germany in half a century or so, and what Germans there are, will be old and grey, put out to ‘pasture’, like the horse in Animal Farm.

While we’re on the founder of Islam, a ruling from the European Court, an entity that should not even exist, the other day declared it illegal to insult, or in any way blaspheme, the aforementioned, self-proclaimed ‘Prophet’. An Austrian woman, who wishes to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, was denounced for calling Muhammad a ‘paedophile’ for marrying the six-year old Aisha. Now, as the article goes on to clarify, said marriage was not consummated until the wee lass had reached her ninth year, and the ‘Prophet’ about his fiftieth. Oh. According to Canon Law, a woman must have reached her fourteenth year to contract a valid marriage, so Muhammad was five years off the canonical mark, but those five years make a lot of difference.

Now, the court did not say the Prophet was not a paedophile, but, rather, that saying that was out of bounds. As one article summed it up, the “woman’s comments were not objective, failed to provide historical background and had no intention of promoting public debate”, and that, furthermore, her comments “could only be understood as having been aimed at demonstrating that Muhammad was not worthy of worship….were not based on facts and were intended to denigrate Islam”:

Facts? What are those? Muslims themselves admit the historical reality of the aforementioned ‘marriage’. And, furthermore, they don’t’ ‘worship’ Muhammad, saving that sort of devotion for Allah.

And what of debate? Should not we be permitted to discuss the morality of the deeds of historical figures, be they be good, imitable, or not? Certainly many pages have been written on the teachings of Christ, and one is free to make one’s choice, to follow them, or Him, or not. One of the warnings of Benedict XVI in his 2006 Regensburg Address was that Islam must be open to such dialogue on the basis of reason. Otherwise, as evidence has borne out, all we have left is violence.

But, regardless, could you imagine the bureaucrats of this sad supine Court writing such proscriptions about Christ and Our Lady? You can say, draw, print and record whatever you like about the Son of God, to say nothing of Buddha, Joseph Smith, Vishnu and Judge Rutherford, but woe is you for degrading in any way the perfect ‘Prophet’, who could do no wrong, and whose very image is sacrosanct. Anathema sit, infidel!

I wonder if Sinead O’Connor, the erstwhile troubled singer, who attempted ordination as a ‘Catholic priest’ from a schismatic Irish sect, and who has now just recently submitted to Islam, will ever one day tear up a picture of Muhammad, as she did of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live back in the 80’s?

Under such hegemony as the European Union, along with its current demographics and morality, Europe is quite frankly doomed, barring a miracle, one from the only One who can really be the subject of blasphemy, for only He, the one, true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is Holy.

And, speaking of doomed, on the Canadian front, Justin Trudeau and Catherine McKenna have now threatened – no other verb will do – to ram the carbon tax down upon every province, regardless of what they think, violating that age-old Catholic principle of subsidiarity, that societies should be left to govern themselves without interference from higher societies. However, as Trudeau warns in his own jejune manner, this is an emergency; there is no dissenting, the science is done, anthropogenic climate change is a fact beyond all facts, indisputable, and the only way now to save an otherwise doomed planet, or at least Canada, is for people to ‘pay to ‘pollute’, which means putting anything carbon-esque into the air, like driving your car, heating your home, using electricity in any form, or, say, living and breathing. This is an anti-life movement, with diabolical, Manichean undertones, and should quite rightly be resisted as such.

And speaking of ramming laws down our throats, a Jesuit priest, Father Tony van Hee, has been arrested for violating Kathleen Wynne’s ‘bubble zone law’, which made it illegal to in any way protest abortion in front of any facility providing abortion, even pharmacies.

Father van Hee (LifeSite news)

Father van Hee, who has spent much of his ministry praying, fasting and silently demonstrating in front of Parliament Hill, was not even protesting abortion at the time, but rather wearing a sandwich-board sign protesting such limits on free speech, outside the Morgentaler clinic on Bank Street.

This is an evil law, protecting a gravely evil, even demonic, procedure, the sacrifice of unborn children on the altar to the Moloch of convenience. As my own reflections put it (see above) when this law was passed, only one Member of Parliament stood up against this bill as it was voted in Parliament, Jack MacLaren, of the Trillium Party. Alas. Perhaps the witness of this brave priest will put some spine back into our backs to resist our ever-growing descent into evil, drawing some sort of line in the sand, which would include at the very least the right to speak the truth.

Maybe we should all get out there and get arrested with Father. But when we can scarcely convince even a minority of most people, and very few of the hierarchy, to hold a sign quietly on LifeChain, or commit to any sort of ‘pro-life’ work, what hope do we have?

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Hmm. We should recall that one day, sooner than we might think, we will hear these words from the only One who really matters:

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